


Misplaced Expectations

by Raphiael



Category: Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy IV: The After Years
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Manpain, Present Tense, Storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-28
Updated: 2012-08-28
Packaged: 2017-11-13 02:02:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/498222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raphiael/pseuds/Raphiael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kain is not quite like the stories Ceodore's heard all his life, and Ceodore is not quite like his parents. </p><p>Takes place midway through The Crystals. Gen, but with a vague side of Kain/Cecil/Rosa, which seems to be unavoidable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Misplaced Expectations

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rethira](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rethira/gifts).



> Someday I'll write FFIV fic that doesn't sneak my Baron OT3 into it, I swear. 
> 
> Done for the rarepair challenge for Team Shiva over at FF Exchange, though admittedly a more gen way of doing things.
> 
> Prompt: "When Ceodore first figures out who Kain is, he's suddenly hit by the knowledge that his childhood hero - Cecil tells a lot of Kain-centric stories - has just spent a while repeatedly saving his life. Cue Ceodore not really knowing what to do with all his Kain feels."

Kain Highwind does not look like Ceodore imagined he would, now that he knows he's seeing him in person. He's older, thinner, sadder than he'd envisioned from his father's stories– fond tales of triumph, of glory, of friendship. Even now, in his immaculate white-blue-silver regalia, he's not the legend Ceodore's built in his mind. Not even close. 

 _Is this really the man who could fly like a dragon with only a jump?_ he thinks, as he watches Kain, hood now abandoned, tending to his weapons as he leans against the wall of the Lunar Whale.

“Why didn't you tell me?” he asks, when finally there is a quiet moment. “Did you think I wouldn't know your name?” _Did you fear I would?_ Somehow that's more important than being in a spaceship on his way to the moon. It's even more important than the quiet murmurs of his father, staring off at something Ceodore cannot see. No, Kain is standing there, so nonchalant as he rubs the scuffs off his new armor, as if nothing's changed at all, and Ceodore won't stand for it.

“There was nothing to say,” he answers with a shrug. “It wouldn't have changed anything.”

It was so much harder to feel angry at Kain when he was just an anonymous man in strange, half-tattered clothes, a helpful, if cold, stranger who knew the innards of Baron as well as he knew his own shadow. Ceodore has to force himself to remember that the hands he sees now are the same ones that pulled him up from the cliffs when he fell, treated his wounds when he couldn't manage himself, accepted his attempts at healing, pointed the way back home when he'd thought all was lost.

He clenches his own fists, looking up at Kain– the older man has at least two heads on him, and seems coolly aware of it, looking slightly down with an arch of his eyebrow– and nods firmly. “I could have told you everything they said, asked you _so much_ –”

“And to what end?”

There's something in his voice that is like what Ceodore recalls of the tales that used to lull him to sleep. “Not a man of many words, and he always sounded sterner than he meant to,” his father would say when Ceodore asked after the family friend he'd never met, “but he was never one for dishonesty.”

 _You could've known how much they missed you_ did not sound _,_ in Ceodore's mind, like something that would sway the chill he heard in the man's voice. Perhaps it was his memory of that dark-helmed dragoon he'd seen only briefly, but Ceodore thought Kain would only laugh at the sentiment.

“I'd have trusted you immediately, rather than treat you as a stranger. You knew who I was from the beginning, did you not? Suppose I had run from you– what then?”

For a stretch of time that feels far too long, the only sounds are the thrum of the Whale as it rises higher, the light rub of cloth on already-clean holy armor, and the soft, indistinct mumblings of Ceodore's father on the other side of the room. Kain's lips tighten together and loosen again, baring just the slightest hint of teeth that look sharper for a moment than Ceodore knows they are.

“You're stubborn,” Kain sighs at last. “Like your mother.” Ceodore hardens his eyes, knowing well how fierce his mother's glare can be, and he swears he sees Kain flinch just a bit at it. “But you're just like your father– you trusted me anyway, didn't you?”

Ceodore's not sure just what to say to that, especially since there's no triumph on Kain's face that he can see. It's just a statement, simple and true, and that, more than anything, makes Ceodore want to punch him in his stupid pretty dragoon face.

“Bastard,” he snaps, a word he picked up from Biggs, who always managed to sound meaner when he said it.

And at that, to his shock, Kain just laughs, a sound that sounds dry and unfamiliar in his throat, half as if his lips were unaccustomed to even smiling.

“Maybe I was wrong,” he says, shaking his head.

Ceodore punches the wall instead.


End file.
